From 1993 to 1996, he was the director of the American Institute in Taiwan. He also served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the East Asian and Pacific Bureau of the State Department, Deputy Chief of Mission at the United States Embassy in Beijing, Deputy Executive Secretary of the Department of States and Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State.

In his diplomatic career, he has been posted to Moscow, Hong Kong, Beijing, Taipei, and Kuala Lumpur. He speaks Mandarin Chinese.

On February 21, 2010, three days after North Korea declared it would not abandon its nuclear weapons program, Pascoe, who had just visited Pyongyang, strongly defended international food aid to the country. "These are human beings that need the food. It's not the political system. This shouldn't be argued in a political way," he told CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

B. Lynn Pascoe aboard USNS Mercy, February 2005

Born in 1943, he obtained his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Kansas and his Master of Arts from Columbia University.